Dark Star<\/a>, John Carpenter put himself front and center with his sophomore effort, where he created his unique style that would leave his signature all over genre cinema for the next 20 years.<\/p>\nAssault on Precinct 13 is Carpenter\u2019s contemporary ode to the Western (well, it was in 1976), specifically Rio Bravo (not the only Howard Hawks film Carpenter would reimagine). Instead of the dusty plains of the Old West, Carpenter brings a violent standoff to the streets of South Central Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
The titular precinct is all but gutted ahead of being commissioned, but cop Ethan Bishop (Austin Stoker) is assigned to it for its final night. What the film doesn\u2019t explicitly talk about is why the precinct is closing. sure, there are other precincts to pick up the slack, but the introduction of a sadistic gang gives an underlying hint that the police have lost this area to crime and would rather keep it at arm\u2019s length. That\u2019s clearly why when shit hits the fan, there\u2019s nobody around to give a damn.<\/p>\n<\/figure>\nThis is why Bishop finds his first and last night at the precinct a lot louder than he might have expected. Not only does a busload of convicts on their way to prison end up stopping by, but a man is chased into the station by the aforementioned gang, who seem to be a bit aggrieved that he didn\u2019t just give up and die earlier. <\/p>\n
The skeleton staff and prisoners are given little choice but to work together to survive when the gang launches an assault on the precinct, but the alliance is naturally not a smooth one. in the end, it all falls to Bishop, steely receptionist Leigh (Laurie Zimmer), and convicted murderer Napoleon Wilson (Darwin Joston) to hold down the fort in an increasingly desperate situation.<\/p>\n
Like many early Carpenter films, the magic is in how he recaptures the classic movie atmosphere in a more modern way. There\u2019s a tense atmosphere in Assault on Precinct 13 that is an eerie match for Hawks\u2019 Rio Bravo, and the tough-talking cool of the characters also replicates the brooding swagger of John Wayne, Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson, and company in that film. But its rough and ready approach holds as much debt to George A. Romero\u2019s Night of the Living Dead as the tensions feel more contemporary, with a group of relative strangers given little time to get acquainted before things go South.<\/p>\n\n